290 SEA-SIDE STUDIES. 



avidity in search of materials ! " Imagine a brood of chickens 

 hatcheil from the eggs of a virgin hen, and you will conceive 

 Siebold's surprise. He subsequently found that bees, in like 

 manner, produce hundreds of eggs, which, however, invaii- 

 ably become male bees ; for it is only the fertilised bee-egg 

 which will develop into a female — either worker, or queen. 

 p- Ungallant physiologists, resting on the evidence of some 

 embryological phenomena, have declared the female to be 

 only a male in arrested development ; a very impertinent 

 deduction, which was, however, flung back on them by a 

 witty friend of mine, who, hearing that one of her own sex 

 was fond of reading metaphysics, and was feared to be sufier- 

 ing from a softened brain, drew her own conclusion as to 

 this masculine course of study, exclaiming, ''Man is hut 

 woman with a softened brain ! " She would have also 

 retorted Von Siebold's facts about the bees, which point at 

 a miserable inferiority on the part of the males. But I must 

 not let her prematurely enjoy this triumph : if the imperfect 

 bee is always a male, the imperfect moth {Psijche) is always 

 a female ; and to reconcile both parties, we have the silk- 

 worm moth, whose virgin progeny is both male and female. 

 In conclusion, be it noted that Von Siebold's work estab- 

 lishes Parthenogenesis as a normal process in bees and 

 moths, on grounds which, Funke justly says, do not permit 

 the severest scepticism to raise a doubt worthy of notice.* 

 He, moreover, points to the fact that among the Entomo- 

 straca there are species of which only the female is known ; 



* FOKKE. Lehrluch dcr Physiologic, 1857, p. 132G. 



